The days are always busy for the design and dev teams at The Blog Studio with builds, rebuilds and updates for our clients.

To help shed some light on the process and share some tips with the world, we got Developer and Rock Star, Mike Caputo to share his list of 10 Go To WordPress Plugins.

While you may not need all 10 of these plugins for your site, they may come in very handy if you’re looking for new options in your builds, or you’re just the type to check out a new idea to see if it fits better than what you’re using right now. Check out our list of 10 Go To Plugins and give yourself some new options for your next website.

Remember to read the reviews and to post any questions in WordPress forums before you jump in on a new plugin. And always, always, back up your website before you make changes. The last thing you need is to be pulling your hair out because something didn’t go as planned on try #1.

The Blog Studio’s Most Installed Plugins:

1) AJAX Thumbnail Rebuild – Allows you to rebuild all thumbnails on your site. It is very useful when building sites that already have Featured Images.

2) Contact Form 7 – Contact Form 7 has the capacity to manage multiple contact forms, with the option of easily customizing the form and the mail contents with simple markup.

3) Twitter Widget Pro – A widget that properly handles Twitter feeds, including parsing @usernames. The best Twitter widget plugin we’ve found!

4) Advanced Custom Fields – Helps make custom fields for multiple purposes on websites. Comes in handy very often.

5) W3 Total Cache – The only WordPress Performance Optimization framework; designed to improve UX and page speed. Best caching plugin we’ve found. Note: Does not work on all server environments

6) Advanced Text Widget – Features Include: 10 Default widget visibility conditions with over 20 application possibilities – Unlimited custom conditions – “Advanced Text” widget with raw PHP support and shortcodes execution.

7) Options Framework – Makes it easy to include an options panel in any WordPress theme based on your needs ie. text input – checkbox – select – radio button – upload (image uploader)/

8) Simple Backup – According to Mike: “The easiest way to run a backup.”

9) WordPress Backup to Dropbox – Allows clients to choose the day, time and frequency of backups – as well as dumping their websites files and a SQL database in their Dropbox account!

10) Max Banner Ads – Free/Paid versions allow you to “easily add and rotate banners in your wordpress blog anywhere you like without editing any themes or touching any code.”

There you have it, The Blog Studio’s list of 10 Go To WordPress Plugins. We hope that you find something that makes your website better and your life easier!

It’s a tricky thing, writing what you want other people to know about you while walking the line between personal and professional achievements. It’s important to let your audience/potential clients know what you are going to be able to deliver – without any sweeping statements.

If you have a specialty or proficiency that is vital to your work, share it. If you have a fun hobby or special talent that you are known for, share it. If you have won an award that pertains to your services or expertise, share it.

We are social media pioneers with a deep understanding of internet culture.

Your “About” section is the place to share the things that you want to get across quickly. The shorter, the better. Your personal biographies and posts are great places to get into more detailed stories of your past and present accomplishments. Use your “About” section to grab the attention of your reader and make sure that they know they’ve come to the right place.

If you click on About Us at the top of our page this is what you’ll find:

We are social media pioneers with a deep understanding of internet culture. We create brand awareness.

Our team is comprised of award winning designers, online user experience experts, internet culture creators, PR consultants and content creators. We live and breathe everything and anything happening on the web and pride ourselves on being at the forefront of technology and social media.

We aim to always be 5 steps ahead of the crowd.

There it is. Not complicated. Not an overload of information, but it does tell you who we are and what we do.

And that’s the point. The “About” section of your website should tell everyone who you are and what you do and leave the meatier, more specific information to the rest of your website content – your work speaks volumes about your business.

Get your audience hooked with your “About” section and they’ll be turning through the rest of your pages to learn more about you and discover just how fit you are for the job!

Our friends over at Sysomos posted a blog recently with some great reasons why blogging is still important in a world where Facebook updates and Tweets are the most prevalent forms of online information sharing.

The post says that blogging is important (read it here) and we agree!

Using a blog on your own website gives you and your brand the opportunity to talk about what is important to you and your community without worrying about restricting character limits or complicated sharing algorithms. A blog is a place to share thoughts and ideas and announcements that deserve explanation and expanded thoughts.

When you’re writing for your blog remember a few things that can help with your success moving forward.

Be Consistent:
Consistency is key. Not only in posting frequency, but in voice as well. Just like in your marketing materials and social media, the voice that you use in your blog posts should be part of the same plan and execution.

Say Something:
This may be the hardest part of blogging for your brand. While it’s important to be consistent with your posts and hit the publish button often, posting something without any relevance to your company or community should be avoided.

Say It Well:
We know that not everyone is a writer. And we know that writing doesn’t come easily to some people. But if you are going to write a blog it is important to make sure that you aren’t posting with spelling errors, typos, overlooked grammatical issues and other easily remediable mistakes.

Blogging is still a great option for brands to say what they want to say, how they want to say it. It’s also a great way to get people on your website where they can find more information about your brand and what you do and what you have to offer!

So, if you think you’ve still got something to say – keep blogging! We can’t wait to read it!

Update: WordPress 3.5 is now available! The launch date was pushed back from the original target of December 5 to December 11.

There are some changes coming with the update to WordPress 3.5, and one of them is something that you will probably notice right off the top. Twenty Twelve has become the new default theme and is now available for download if you want to test it or see how it may change your website if you are currently using WordPress 3.4.2 or higher. Twenty Twelve is a fully responsive theme that will adjust to fit the screen size for anyone who stumbles across your site on their desktop, laptop, tablet or phone.

There are also updates coming to the media management and how you upload photos, arrange galleries, insert images into posts, and more. These changes will make media handling easier and more intuitive as an overall experience in WordPress for users of all backgrounds, experience levels and needs. The simplified process is easy to learn, easy to use and allows you to work quickly with your media uploads. It’s a large scale upgrade from the developers at WordPress and it will be interesting to see if the reaction from users equals the time and effort that the team has put into the changes.

Added to WordPress 3.5 is something that bloggers have been waiting for (somewhat patiently) for quite some time now, a Tumblr importer support. While everyone loves Tumblr, it certainly doesn’t match up with WordPress when it comes to customizable options and development. Now that you have the option of importing all of your Tumblr posts that you love, you can start with a better system and have a better website.

Here are some instructions for setting up your Tumblr import from Technosailor.com: On the Settings > Import page, you can now activate Tumblr import support. Warning: The process of importing Tumblr is a little kludgey and that is due to Tumblr’s own systems. You will need to register an app with Tumblr, enter certain key information about your WordPress install into the Tumblr app registration page, and copy certain key information into WordPress.

Wordpress 3.5 will also give you the chance to browse and install plugins that you have marked as favorites on WordPress.org, right from your dashboard. It’s an addition that could become very helpful to developers who have plugins that they find themselves using on a regular basis. Anything that saves time and is easy to use is a win. You can also search user names to see what plug-ins other developers have marked as favourties which is a great way to make better websites based on the sites that you like.

Another change is the removal of the Link Manager or Blogroll. The change means that all link management will have to be done through plugins moving forward. Many people saw the old Blogroll system as antiquated since WordPress is being used as a full scale website development tool more now than ever before and many professional web developers using WordPress seem to be happy that this old school feature has been removed.

Other changes include:
- Retina Display Admin to allow for more clarity in print versions and better resolution and rendering on high end Macs, iPhone 5, iPad 3, Kindle HD and many new Android devices.
- A simplified welcome screen and dashboard for new users which should make starting with WordPress easier for new website developers and bloggers.
- A more advanced color picker to assist in everything design related in your day to day use of WordPress.
- A new look on the buttons on your add new post screen that removes the rounded edges and goes with a cleaner, squared up look.
- Improved keyboard navigation and screen reader support for easier day to day use and management of your WordPress website.

As always, remember to back-up all of your files and information before you upgrade to the newest version of WordPress or give us a call and we’ll help you upgrade.

Keep your eyes on the web for reviews and information as more users and developers start using their update, and let us know what you think of the NEW WordPress 3.5!

It’s true in so many aspects of business and life, including your website.

When you are looking at design or redesign ideas for your brand’s website it is very important to stop and think about your needs not only now, but also in the future. The ability to do so will save you time, money, frustration, and downtime in the short and long term.

1.
Think ahead. A great team of designers and developers (like ours) can help give you what you need for your site now while building in tools, pages, features, and plugins that will ensure that your site is equipped for the future. Take some time to sit with your team and think about what you will need now, in the the near future and further down the road. If you can map out what you want and expect to happen in all three of those time periods you can create a better plan for your site.

2.
Know what you want. You are required to provide a list of desired ingredients when you order a pizza. Think of your website the same way. It is important to take the time with your team to decide what you’re looking for before the design and dev team gets to work. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, it’s a lot harder to find it.

3.
Organize content. If your team is going to be responsible for any part of the design and development process be sure that you treat these deadlines with the same urgency that you do with any other. Have your logo, images, copy, or other content available so that things won’t be delayed.

We all know that during a project things can and will change, it won’t be troublesome when things have been well put together, planned out and executed initially. Problems arise when the entire project changes day to day and there isn’t a clear sense of direction.

Our team is dedicated to giving you a great result based on your vision. And when a project gets started with a comprehensive idea of what you want and need, we’re able to work hard to give it to you. Proper planning may take more time now – but in the long run it will save your team both time and money.

I’m still thinking about Maggie Koerth-Baker, Science Editor at BoingBoing.net talk from the “Emerging Technology + Advertising 2012” conference. Maggie presented “The Thrill Of Failure” and I was deeply inspired by her words.

She discussed scientific failure over the last 100+ years and how it can be easily paralleled to business. From the electric car’s beginnings in New York City at the turn of the 20th century, the light bulb, and wind farms in North America, the message was clear: initial rate of failure far outweighs the rate of immediate success. Looking at all of these inventions and innovations, not one of them is a terrible idea. They never failed because they couldn’t work; many of their failures came from a lack of opportunity, understanding or faith in the product. They succeeded because of new vision, persistence, and an ability to see the bigger picture.

Persistence and perseverance are the key. Perfect your idea through testing, research, collaboration, and effort. Rarely are great ideas polished and perfected on the first try. I’m willing to bet that it took Colonel Sanders more than a single Sunday dinner to figure out the perfect blend of 11 herbs and spices. The odds are that your awesome idea is going to need some work too.

Here’s the thing: not every idea is a good one. Not every good idea succeeds on day 1.
The entire talk reminded me of a Japanese Proverb: Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8. There are a lot of sayings that get to the same point. The important thing to take away from it is that you have to keep trying. And the only sure fire way to determine that your idea never works, is to give up on it.

So, if you think you’ve come up with something great, get the team together, talk it out with the people you know, trust, and value, and get to work! It may not be easy but it’ll totally be worth it.

Good luck.

Keep being awesome!

Community Management isn’t a one person job. While it’s true that you may have one community manager on your project, they are probably not (and probably shouldn’t be) working alone.

While the scope of your project will help to determine the size of your team, there are some easy to track pieces that you can always keep in mind.

A) Conversation (how much social engagement is needed)

B) Account Management (meetings with clients, managing expectations, scheduling, day to day)

C) Content (editorial calendars, quality control, content management, graphics, video)
i) idea generation/concepts/brainstorming
ii) design/execution

If you are working on a smaller project which needs minimal content, conversation and contact with your client you might be able to get away with a 1 person team. IF, they 1) have great ideas that never run out 2) can use photo/video editing software to a professional design level 3) never need time off and are available 18-24 hours a day.

When you bring a qualified team together you:

A) Have more ideas and different perspectives.

B) Create better visual content from someone who is talented enough to provide it.

C) Work with efficient and organized management of your client and the project.

D) Have a dedicated and constant conversation with the community.

E) Are less stressed/overloaded ensuring an enthusiastic/productive project.

Community management is a team game when it’s played the right way. Trying to go at it alone won’t get you very far in the long run. Trust your colleagues, build a strong team and put in some great work together to give your client exactly what they need.

When talking with geeks, or anyone who works in tech, they are often mystified by public relations. People are filled with misconceptions. They think of a world of shady spinmeisters huddled up in a back room somewhere constructing audacious lies to save the necks of evil CEO’s. Alternately, they imagine a world of women with too much makeup running interference because Lindsay Lohan got drunk and wrapped her Range Rover around a tree or Tom Cruise said a little too much about Scientology. It’s a shame, because the real world of PR isn’t anything like this. The average business owner, techy, developer or designer actually stands to gain a lot by interacting with the world of PR and the press. Seeing your latest project written, blogged and reported about is essential in the 21st Century. If you’re building something great, they won’t come. You need to lead them there.

Over the course of a few blog posts, we’re going to give you the PR basics you need to get your name up in lights (or in pixels as the case may be). Think of this as “PR 101” for non-PR people. Armed with the right information, supplied by your friends at The Blog Studio, a bit of research, some clever emails and the right attitude, there is no reason the press shouldn’t be writing about what you’re doing.

Make it easy for anyone that wants to write about you. The simpler it is for a writer to get the basic background info they need, the more likely they are to include you in the piece they are working on. Plus, the less time you need to spend telling them the basics, the more time you’ll have to discuss the interesting things you’re creating, and make the pitch for your work. The simplest way to do this is to create a press page. Surprisingly, most businesses don’t have a press page. The ones that are out there are often poor, uninteresting, dull and seem like afterthoughts. Having a killer press page will separate you from the competition and make sure you get written about, not your competition.

What makes the perfect press page? To begin with, the tone, attitude and vocabulary of your writing need to be appealing. Do you believe in the work you’re doing and what you’re creating? Make sure that comes across in your copy. Write as if you’re the best thing going, but don’t cross the line into being pompous. That never plays well in the press. Be cheerful, be optimistic and most of all be honest. If you write any half truths, little white lies or blatant falsehoods, they will come back to bite you in the digital ass. In the ultra-connected 21st Century, it only takes a minute with a search engine to suss out your dishonesty. Keep the tone of your copy light, hopeful and honest, and you’ll do great. Keep in mind as your write, that you’re telling a story, hopefully an engaging one. You aren’t filling out a mortgage application.

The physical design of your press page should match the aesthetics and design sensibility of your company, and the rest of your website. There are certain elements that should be included in every press page, which are essential to creating a media friendly image for your company. You should put your own personal spin on these features, but including them will definitely help your case.

A History
Include a short, 3-5 paragraph, history of your company in narrative form. Pretend that you’re telling a story, and the audience knows nothing about what you do. Highlight the people, places, milestones and major successes that you’ve accomplished so far. Describe your company culture, what makes your group unique and the reasons why your business is run the way it is. A company history will give a journalist writing about your company the long view of how your company sees its’ place in the world.

Employee Bios
Create very short biographies of key personnel, and there role in the companies mission. You aren’t writing a resume. A few succinct sentences of what each person does to keep things rolling is plenty. Company bios tend to get boring fast, so just include the major milestone accomplishments for each person. It’s a good idea to include a photo for each person as well. Stay away from those generic corporate mugshots. Is there anything that sucks the life out of a good story any more quickly then a boring photo of a scarecrow in a suit?

A Note To the Press
Compose a short note addressing any journalist who may be thinking about including you in a piece. In your own words, let them know you love the press, enjoy being included in the media circus and would be happy to provide them with quotes, photos, documentation, a preview of your product or anything else that will make the writers job easier. Extending a clear invitation to media types goes a long way, and lets people know that you’re game to play the game. If you have a communications officer or PR person on staff, this note should be written, composed and signed by them. Think of this as extending an olive branch to the media; “We’re friendly, we don’t bite, feel free to get in touch”.

A Document Library
Create a section within your press page to display any company documents that you would feel comfortable sharing with a writer, and that a writer may find useful while researching your company. This is the spot to upload any brochures, white papers, videos, ads and slide decks you’ve created. The more background info you can provide, the more interested parties can learn about what you do. Having a gallery, with photos, logos and graphics in the highest resolution you can provide is extremely helpful. In many cases, the availability of good multimedia assets can be the tipping point that gets you included in a piece over your competitors. If you have a solid social media presence on visual networks like YouTube or Flickr, include links to your pages here. Some companies choose to password protect their document libraries, and hand out the passwords like they’re the key to a national secret. Why? If you’re nervous about people seeing certain documents, don’t post them! Otherwise, make it simple for anyone to view and use what you’ve created.

Previous Press Hits
It’s a simple truth, but press begets more press. If you’ve been featured in the media before, include scans, PDF’s and links to these articles here. Reporters often feel more comfortable writing about companies that have a proven track record in the media. This will also give researching journalists a chance to see what has been said about your work, and a chance to discover fresh angles. A press gallery is also a low key way to do a little bragging to potential clients and your competitors. If your being written about, why not share it with as many people as you can?

Contact Information
Nothing will frustrate a writer more than wanting to grab you for a quote, an interview request or a fact checking session, and not being able to get in touch with you. On your contact page, there is no such thing as overkill. Start with the names of the people in your organization who are the points of contact for the media. Provide as many different ways to get in touch with you as possible – every member of the media has their own preferred method of contact. At the minimum, an email address, phone number and mailing address should be here. However, this is 2011, so you should also include your social media links, Twitter handle, Skype name and any other way it’s possible to get a hold of you.

Creating an online presence for the press is just the first step to making PR work for you. Stay tuned for part two, where we’ll explain how to start making in roads into the media world.

For a while, banner ads that read “Find Out Who Is Searching For You On Facebook!” were popping up all over the place. Many people clicked on them, only to be disappointed. It isn’t possible to find that information out. Until now. A guy named Jeremy, on his blog TheKeesh.com has discovered a way to get into the guts of the Facebook search mechanism and shed some light on the mechanics of what is going on.

While doing some work with Facebook, Jeremy wondered if it was possible to type faster than the Facebook auto-complete feature. He discovered that it wasn’t and in the process discovered a file called first_degree.php, with some very interesting JSON info (basically JSON is a data exchange format that is readable in plaintext). This file contains a list of the Facebook people you search for, and view the most often. It’s the naughty inside your brain when you’re surfing Facebook converted into a Text file. I imagine some people won’t be surprised, but will be embarrassed when the list is populated with high school flames, attractive people from their office and lots of exes. Next to each name entry is a positive or negative number, which they use as a sort of popularity rankings system. TheKeesh.com has made it dead simple to find and view this information. They’ve created a bookmarklet, available on their site, which you drag into your browsers tool bar. Next, disable the ‘Safe Browsing’/HTTPS security setting in Facebook. Click the bookmarklet, shield your eyes and the list will pop-up. It is truly that easy.

Anyone who works with Facebook in a marketing or data capacity has definitely wondered how the algorithm they use works to rank your friends when you search. This isn’t the whole solution to the puzzle, but it’s definitely an integral part, and an interesting one at that. My guess is that Facebook won’t be happy when they discover that this information, and an accompanying easy to use bookmarklet, are out in the wild. If you’re interested in experimenting with this data, get cracking, because a fix and take down notice can’t be far behind. It’s my hope that some smart people with much more knowledge about code and search algorithms jumps on this information and makes the picture even clearer. I also have to give huge props to Jeremy for discovering this info, building the bookmarklet to make it accessible to everyone and sharing it with the world. Very well done.

Flickr is one of the most useful, but underrated social media platforms on the web. It doesn’t have the headline grabbing power of multi billion dollar valuations like Twitter, and isn’t the newest kid on the block like Google +. Year after year, Flickr does it’s job – sharing photos – extremely well, so it rarely pops up in the press, or in conversations about the social web. It’s a shame. More web dwellers should realize it’s possible to put the low-key profile of this brilliant service to work for your and your business. With a small amount of careful, consistent work, Flickr can improve the SEO of your websites, expand your online profile and reputation, promote your projects and maybe even bring a few bucks in on the side through photo sales.

When we speak with our clients, we find that most of them are just vaguely aware of Flickr, or occasionally use it as a place to dump photos. Since Flickr is a dark horse, we’ll start with the very basics here, to get you started using Flickr and seeing results.  To get going we’ll delve into 3 ways you can use Flickr to improve the online influence of your business, your brand and yourself. This is just the start, as there are so many ways to make the most out of Flickr, so you can expect us to dig deeper into this topic with additional blog posts.

Uploading with Apps
Getting your photos online is the lynchpin of any Flickr based campaign. The key to using Flickr well, is having loads of photos in your Flickr stream. The more photos you provide, the better chance there is that someone will find them. After a quick inspection, you’ll notice that they don’t make it easy for you to get your images online. This is the case in the main Flickr web interface. However, by using one of the brilliant Flickr uploading tools, you can submit huge numbers of photos with a minimum of effort. More importantly, you can provide the correct metadata, like keywords and descriptions, that are essential for Flickr success. The key is to use the uploading apps to make certain that all the photos you upload have titles that contain a descriptive keyword, tags that describe the photos and what they might be used for, the right type of licensing and their location on a map. Using an uploading app lets you add all this data quickly, in one shot. Having correct, thorough information attached to your photos is the most important thing to make Flickr work for you.

Flickr for SEO
Flickr is a solid tool for improving SEO, while generating traffic and links. Image searches are popular in all search engines. People need photos to illustrate blog posts, news articles, for graphics in documents and an infinite number of other uses. Filling this niche, by providing people with these photos is an excellent strategy for gaining traction on the web. When creating the descriptions for your pictures, take the time to be extra thorough. Describe what’s in the photo. Also describe where the photo was taken, provide the date, add the dominant colors and list any words, like ad copy, that appear. Put yourself in the shoes of a person looking for an image to use on a project. What keywords would you search for?  These descriptive words will bring traffic right to you. In order to capitalize on this traffic, make sure you add your name and website to the description in every photo. The people who find your images will see your website listed there and pay a visit. It’s a way to get your url in front of thousands of new visitors.

Use the Analytics Tool Flickr has outstanding analytic tools built right into the main interface. For some reason, Flickr makes this information difficult to find.

Clicking the squiggly line (highlighted by the red arrow in this illustration) will take you to the “hidden” analytics page. You can also view this by going to You > Your Stats.

You’ll be shown overall statistics such as how many people have clicked on your photos, when they were viewed and which individual photos are most popular. The most useful section of the Flickr analytic report is the “Referrers” section. Here you can see how people found your images, right down to the individual web pages and search terms they’ve used. Examining the search terms will give you more ideas on how to better tag your photos so more people will find them, by adding these search terms to the tags when you add new images. Since you can see the places where your work is appearing on the web, you can drop by those pages and leave a comment. Let the people who’ve used your work know that you’re flattered they picked your photo, and leave your URL to help get the word out. It’s a method of expanding your circle of online contacts without being a spammer.

Flickr is a very solid, underrated social media service. The fact that it’s somewhat under utilized is a boom for anyone who chooses to take advantage of it, because the competition for eyeballs here is less fierce. This is our first installment of ways that you can use Flickr, so stay tuned here for more ideas coming up soon. In the meantime, send us a link to your Flickr streams so we can see what you have going on.